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The one where Nurk, the shrew, opens a letter that's meant for his grandmother, Surka the warrior hero, and thus is forced to set off on an adventure of his own, guided only by her journal. This is a charming kids' book. The art is at least a third of the pleasure, and Surka's badly spelled, fearless journal is another third. The tone is great, mildly skeptical without being openly sarcastic. (For instance, once Nurk gets his snail-shell boat out into mid-river, he notes that it's going faster than he's ever seen it go, and then, remembering that its former owner was a snail, he decides it's going faster than it's ever gone.) I do kind of feel that the book could have made better use of the fact that it's almost entirely populated by creatures smaller than my hand. This "river," for instance -- if it's more than a little trickle, then it ought to look like the ocean to a shrew; none of the land-dwelling creatures his own size would ever have seen the other side of it. I wish the landscape had been more alien.

2023-06-24 18:27